DAILY READINGS

DAILY READINGS & SERMONS

DAILY MASS READINGS

Tuesday 21 October 2025

Tuesday of week 29 in Ordinary Time

Liturgical Colour: Green. Year: C(I).

Readings at Mass

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First reading
Romans 5:12,15,17-21

Divine grace, coming through Jesus Christ, came as an abundant free gift

Sin entered the world through one man, and through sin death, and thus death has spread through the whole human race because everyone has sinned; but the gift itself considerably outweighed the fall. If it is certain that through one man’s fall so many died, it is even more certain that divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift. If it is certain that death reigned over everyone as the consequence of one man’s fall, it is even more certain that one man, Jesus Christ, will cause everyone to reign in life who receives the free gift that he does not deserve, of being made righteous. Again, as one man’s fall brought condemnation on everyone, so the good act of one man brings everyone life and makes them justified. As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous. When law came, it was to multiply the opportunities of failing, but however great the number of sins committed, grace was even greater; and so, just as sin reigned wherever there was death, so grace will reign to bring eternal life thanks to the righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Commentary

In his letter to the Romans Paul gives two explanations of the passion and death of Christ. The first, at 3.25, was in terms of the annual Jewish sacrifice on the Day of Reconciliation: Christ is the reconciliation for our sins. Now he gives another explanation, in terms of the sin of Adam.
In Hebrew ‘Adam’ means ‘man’ or ‘mankind’, and in the story of the Fall the sin of Adam represents human sinfulness as a whole, the sin of the whole human race. A myth is not a false or inaccurate story; it is a religious or otherwise important truth, conveyed in story form. Death was not part of God’s plan for the human race, but it spread through the whole human race in so far as everyone has sinned. It was not, as the old Latin translation suggested, that in a historical Adam everyone somehow sinned, but in so far as we personally have sinned we are part of Adam, the human race. Death came to all through the sin of one man. In fact Paul says death ‘came to many’, but the Hebrew ‘many’ (and Paul is thinking in Hebrew, though writing in Greek) does not have the sense of the modern word which suggests ‘many but not all’; it is an inclusive word with no hint of exclusion or exception.
However, the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ, wiped out and annulled the disobedience of Adam. It is the obedience of Jesus to his Father that was the source of the free gift, the grace of God, the reconciliation, the renewal of union between God and the human race. The passion of Jesus is the supreme moment of union between Christ and the Father, the supreme moment of loving obedience, which undoes the proud disobedience of Adam, the human race

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Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 39(40):7-10,17